Young Republicans Want To Do Something About Climate, At Some Point In The Future. Yay.

[hatrack]

Gosh, their fearless commitment to some vaguely defined free-market based and extremely civil, gradual change in energy policy thirty or forty years from now is just what we need. Why, over one in three accept that human activity is changing Earth's climate.



EDIT

In a Pew Research Center poll released in May, 36 percent of Millennial Republicans (those born between 1981 and 1996) said they believe the Earth is warming mostly due to human activity – double the number of baby boomers in the GOP who say the same. Millennial Republicans are also more likely than baby boomers to say they are seeing effects of climate change where they live and that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the environment. They’re less likely than their elders to support expansions of fossil fuel energy sources like coal mining, fracking, and offshore drilling.

That’s not to say a big partisan divide doesn’t still exist: Young Republicans may be twice as likely as older conservatives to believe human activity is causing the Earth to warm, but the number pales in comparison to Democrats across all generations, where 75 percent hold that belief (and where few generational differences exist). And across generations, Republicans in the poll tended to be in agreement that policies aimed at reducing the effect of climate change either made no difference for the environment or did more harm than good.

“I would see it as an emerging change,” says Cary Funk, director of science and society research at Pew. “We were struck by the differences between Millennial Republicans and older Republicans, particularly on energy issues.… It’s certainly something to keep watching.”

That hesitation about climate policies among conservatives is some of what Mr. Posner was hoping to address when he launched S4CD earlier this year. When he talks to other conservatives, he emphasizes mitigation strategies that are underpinned by free-market principles, such as carbon pricing and dividends schemes. He also tries to allow for a range of beliefs on climate science – where even climate-change skeptics might support it as a sort of “insurance policy based around the free market.” Michele Combs, the chairman and founder of Young Conservatives for Energy Reform (YC4ER), also says she focuses conversations on natural points of agreement – and often avoids mentioning climate change at all, while working to promote renewable, clean energy across the United States, often at the state level.

EDIT

https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2018/0628/Why-these-young-Republicans-see-hope-in-climate-action

[TheRealNorth]

1. Sure

They want to make as much money now so that when food prices rise and starvation sets in they won't be the ones starving.